Of Summers and Grandmothers
by fowl68
Summary: You know without asking who it was and welcome them in.


**Disclaimer:** Don't own Naruto.

**Author's Note:** Watched Spirited Away this morning. Gotta say, it's my favorite Miyazaki movie. Unfortunately because of school, I am only now, at 4:40 PM starting to write this. Let's hope my ideas haven't faded any.

Ah, and I don't know Chihiro's mom's name, so if I get it wrong, I apologize.

_-/-_

_A grandmother is a mother who has a second chance. ~Author Unknown_

_-/-/-_

This is your child. She has the same brown hair, the same childish roundness to her cheeks and the same bright hazel to her eyes. This is the child that you carried inside you for nine months, that you've raised these past ten years and she's a stranger to you. Your daughter didn't have those eyes. They were the proper color, but those eyes were too somber, too aged to be your daughter.

This can't be the daughter that you can't remember forgetting, as much as she insists that all those things are true. Those fantastical things that your mother used to speak of when you were a child. Spirits and bathhouses and dragons—they were children's stories.

She calls you 'Mom', but doesn't cling to your arm or shoulder as she did before. When you hug her, she clutches back tightly, but there's an air of awkwardness to it, as though she's not sure how to hold you. Her arms are lean with some muscle, the skin of her palms roughened and calloused. She still smells like the bouquet of roses and of freshly cut grass, but now there's also the scent of pure, clean water and herbal soaps.

You don't recognize the child who grew up when you weren't looking.

She walks into the door of your new house with a clear, calm purpose now, her back straight and head held high like she could take on the world. A hair tie you can't remember buying shimmers in the light streaming in from the open windows. When you offer her a sandwich, she sits down at the table, resting her chin on her arms and smiles. "Yes, please."

You hate the fact that you can't recognize the smiling person at your kitchen table.

-/-

It's the first time in years that you call your mother. At least ten because you didn't want to her to fill Chihiro's head with the children's tales that she still seemed to believe in. "Hello?"

You swallow past the lump your heart has made in your throat. "Hey, mom."

You can imagine her shock. "It's good to hear your voice, darling. How have you been?"

"Just fine. We just moved to a new neighborhood." You hesitate. The fight you'd had with her over her involvement (or lack thereof) in Chihiro's life had been a bitter one. "Chihiro is ten now."

Her voice is carefully neutral. "I'm aware of that. Is there some significance?"

"I was…ah, wondering if…you'd let her spend the summer with you."

"You know I'd be more than happy to. Why the change of heart?"

"…She sees spirits, mom." It's an ability you never asked for, one that you ignored whenever possible. Your husband didn't know about the ability and you had never wanted it for your daughter. "And she's…more enchanted by it than I was."

"I'm sure." Your mother says dryly and you feel the sudden urge to laugh despite your worry over your daughter. Mom had always had the talent to make anyone laugh. "Are you driving her over?"

"I think I should. Just to get her used to the idea." Because her grandmother hadn't been in her life for ten years and you don't want to tell her that it was your fault entirely. "Is Friday a good day for me to drop her off?"

"A perfect day." She hesitates. "So I'll see you then?"

"Count on it, mom."

-/-

Chihiro's wearing a baggy tie-dyed shirt and green shorts that fall past her thin thighs to rest just below her knees. She's dragging a suitcase behind her and the Chihiro you knew would have complained at its weight. This not-Chihiro, this not-daughter of yours, lifts it up the steps to your mother's house without a whisper of a whine.

You both wait a little awkwardly after you ring the doorbell. It doesn't take but a moment for your mother to step out.

"Mom." Her face is lined with wrinkles, but they're the gentle kind, the kind that comes from many joys and some sorrows. Her hair, once as black as a crow's wing, is gray now, though not yet quite silver. Her blue eyes are as intelligent and sharp as ever behind her spectacles.

"Kiyono." Her daughter had changed much in ten years. Her hair, once so long, had been cut almost boyishly short and there were lines on her face that had not been there previously. "And you must be Chihiro." She was going to be a beauty, that she could see almost right away. It would take some time for her to grow out those sticks that she called arms and legs and to grow into the face that still held much of a child's roundness.

"Yes ma'am." It was an automatic response and Chihiro winced inwardly at using it. In the week that she'd been back in this world, she'd gotten many habits from the bathhouse and she'd tried to at least revert her speech back to modern versions of politeness.

A feathery white eyebrow arches. "This isn't military school, Chihiro."

The girl apologizes, bowing her head a little and the old woman thinks that this is going to be an interesting summer.

-/-

Chihiro is an odd child, but you think that you like her like that. She wakes up as early as you do and she does it, surprisingly, without an alarm of any sort. You made a deal for mealtimes. You would cook and she would clean and it worked out better.

You can remember the first time that she walked into the room that you keep as a library out by the porch. Her eyes had lit up and she'd spun in a slow circle to take it all in. When her eyes landed on the ink painting of a dragon, sleek and powerful, those eyes had saddened.

It takes you time to become accustomed to each other. Chihiro doesn't like pickles in her sandwiches and you don't like cucumber salads. She refuses to watch Mythbusters and you think that Lord of the Rings is an obscenely long movie, however good it may be. You don't get cold often and she likes the constant touch of a blanket. Neither of you likes pork. She likes pecan pie and you like pumpkin, but you both love cherry.

When you ask her to help you clean the kitchen one day, she cleans the way that your mother taught you all those decades ago. Take the bucket of soapy water and spill it over the wooden floors and, using one of those tough brooms, scrub out stains and spills and sticky residues from fallen cookie dough. Her jeans are rolled up, her tank top exposing the smooth motions of the muscles that weren't obvious, but were certainly able to carry crates of your home-grown vegetables to the market.

You're passing the Kohaku River one Thursday on one of your walks through the town. You both like the quiet—not the silence, never the silence—and Chihiro shucks her shoes and socks before dipping her feet in the water.

_She sees spirits_, your daughter told you.

"Something special about this river?" You ask.

Chihiro bites her lip, not meeting your eyes. "Don't laugh." She says before telling you everything. It makes you smile because you had seen a bathhouse once. Had met two promising twin witches there and made friends with the less ambitious one. Had enjoyed lunch with a boy with too many limbs and a rough accent, eyes hidden by black glasses.

You sit beside her, despite the protests of your creaking joints. "You told your mother all this? And she didn't know what you were talking about?"

"She said they were children's stories. That I had an overactive imagination."

"Kiyono…your mother…never liked things that she couldn't feel with her own hands, that couldn't be proven. It's her way of dealing with it. Granted, she never had to do anything quite like you did."

"You believe me?"

"That hair tie is magic." You want to laugh at her expression. "I spent much of my childhood in a bathhouse just like the one you described. I would go there every afternoon to visit my friends before their work started. Sometimes, I stayed too long and got volunteered to help."

"I thought spirits hated humans. In general."

"They do. But they knew me. You see, my mother, your great-grandma, was a very firm believer in the spirits. She left food out for them and we had shrines all over our yard. When I showed up there the first time, quite by accident, one of the spirits, I think it was the radish one (my mother loved to plant radishes, you see) recognized and vouched for me. But to have made friends with a river god, that is a special thing."

"I can't see him anymore." Chihiro says sadly.

"He promised, didn't he?"

"Yes." She has the doubt that all of the newer generations do in promises.

"A spirit, and most certainly a river god, is bound by their word. It might take him a while, but he'll come back."

-/-

The summer comes and goes and you get a call at least once a month from your granddaughter. Sometimes she puts her mother on the phone, but not often. You can hear her voice change ever so slightly, becoming smoother.

The twenty-fourth of May, you find her on your doorstep again and it is another summer of discovering this incredible grandchild. Chihiro has a talent for sketching. Her sketches are never finished. There'll be lovely bridges over seas, but there's a blank space large enough for two people-drawings at the rail. There's a lonely train station with a shadow where a future passenger should be. Your favorite is a dragon, eyes and scales drawn in loving detail, but the details begin to fade halfway down his body and he doesn't have a tail.

-/-

She has her first kiss the next year from a blushing boy at school. She calls to tell you first.

-/-

There's a school dance and she's nervous and doesn't know how to dance. She drives down to your house and you play classical music on your old, scratchy radio and teach her the steps. She's clumsy on her feet, but she laughs at her mistakes and says she's glad she isn't going to be entering one of the ballroom dancing competitions that your daughter liked to tape.

-/-

"I might not be able to stay this time, Granny." She had taken to calling you that four summers ago. "Mom and Dad are talking about college."

"It's a part of life, sweetling. Sometimes not that enjoyable, sometimes it is. But it's a good experience."

You don't see her for two summers after that conversation.

-/-

When she comes back, you want to smile. There's a boy—well, a young man, really—with her and you'd always though that Chihiro looked a little incomplete. That's not the case with him beside her. He's tall, raven's wing hair tied back loosely, though some strands had escaped and he constantly had to brush them out of eyes the color of purest jade. He was slender, but there was no mistaking the fact that he could take care of himself if it came to a fight. His skin is pale, like he doesn't spend a lot of time in the sun, but the color reminds you more of the sun's reflection on the water.

Chihiro's grown into herself, childish roundness gone and there's a curve to her cheek that is all woman. She's still small, still skinny, but there's grace where once there was a stork's gawkiness. She's wearing a T-shirt that may or may not be hers (you're never sure whether the elegant Celtic eagle design is his taste or hers) and the baggy jeans that she favors and they are good at camouflaging the curves she's gained in the last twelve years. But the purple tie still sparkles as brightly as ever in her hair.

You know without asking that this is the boy, the river god, the friend, the first love and you smile and welcome them in.


End file.
